


Stars and Wheat and Apples and Eyes

by AstroGirl



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angels and Demons, Crowley vs. Plants, Gen, Miracles, The Arrangement (Good Omens), Ye Olde Medieval Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28140738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: Crowley blesses some crops and is mistaken for an angel.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 81
Collections: Gen Prompt Bingo Round 19





	Stars and Wheat and Apples and Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Gen Prompt Bingo, for the prompt "mistaken identity."

The angel didn't tell him there would be so bloody many fields.

Bastard. Crowley's sure he downplayed it on purpose, knowing he'd have probably passed on this particular exchange of favors if he knew. The blessed, awful, beautiful _bastard_.

The problem is, plants are _stubborn_. Humans are so much easier. Just whisper a few words in their ears, and they'll usually do half the work for you, whether you're saving them or damning them or just trying to get an extra bottle of wine out of them. Not plants, though. Plants are too stupid to talk themselves into things, and too full of the spark of life to let you just _do_ things to them. 

Even when you're trying to _help_ the blessed things. Honestly, he's half tempted to redirect his energy into cursing them instead. Could anyone really blame him? He remembers a story Jesus told him, while they were playing world tourist in the desert. If even the Son of God couldn't resist the urge to curse a bloody fig tree when it wouldn't let you miracle it into producing one measly out-of-season fruit, how could anyone hold it against a demon?

Not that any of that would stop the angel from looking disappointed in him. Not that it would keep him from saying, "It's all right, I suppose such things really shouldn't be expected of a demon." Not that it would keep him from having to come all the way out here himself to finish the job, when they could spend the time drinking together instead.

And, besides, the peasants do need to eat. Based on what he saw back in the village, they seem to be getting fairly scrawny. And, yes, all right, ensuring a bountiful harvest here will work in Heaven's favor, enriching the feudal lord who will enrich the Church who will build a cathedral with a nice tapestry of Gabriel in it, or whatever it was Aziraphale had said their interest was. Crowley was too busy watching him eat quails' eggs to pay full attention to the exposition. But dead peasants are peasants beyond temptation; whereas happy, well-fed peasants are peasants with plenty of energy to get up to wickedness. So, really, it's all good for Hell, anyway. Or bad for Hell. Whichever.

He realizes he's stalling again and sighs. Right, just one more field to go. He can do this. 

He draws in a deep breath, makes a reasonable attempt to focus his mind, draws power deep into himself, and he blesses the Hell of out of this one, last, stupid, stubborn field of edible weeds. 

He can feel the plants fighting him, still -- and one day, he swears to Satan, he is going to find a better way of dealing with the little photosynthetic assholes -- but slowly, slowly they are losing. Take that, you bastards, he thinks, as the soil grows richer around their roots, as pests and parasites and fungi shrivel and die, as limp stalks grow perkier, and everything gets tastier, too, because who knows? Some of this grain might well end up in bread that will end up in Aziraphale's mouth, and if he mentions that to the angel he'll undoubtedly get a smile, and bless it, he's _earned_ one.

When it's done -- _finally --_ he feels limp and wrung out, and the air is positively laden with the disgusting stench of blessing. Seriously, there's so much of it probably even the _humans_ can smell it. Or could if there were any here, rather than all being in church, doing... whatever it is humans do in churches. It's not like Crowley has any idea.

"There," he mutters to himself, to the plants, to Aziraphale, wherever he is right now. "That blessed enough for ya?"

"Oh yes! Yes. Thank you, my lord. Thank you!"

For a weird, terrible moment, Crowley thinks perhaps he's blessed the stupid wheat too hard, and somehow granted it a voice. He's wondering, panicked, how he's going to explain that to Aziraphale, or possibly to Beelzebub, when he realizes that the words have come from behind him, not from the field in front of him.

He turns to see a human -- dirty, elderly, and quivering -- prostrated before him with his face in the dirt.

"Praise be!" he says. "Thank you, O angel. How loving, how merciful is God, to send his angel to save us from starvation!"

Crowley blinks down at him. "Angel? Do I _look_ like an angel?" He slides the smoky lenses down his nose until his eyes are clearly visible, and turns his head a little to display the mark of the serpent on his face.

It is one thing, after all, to do the work of an angel. It's quite another one to be _called_ an angel. It's... it's insulting. It's _strange_.

He has been a demon since humans were barely off the celestial drawing board. No human has ever looked at him and seen something holy. No one has ever prostrated himself before him like this. No one who didn't want something terrible from him, anyway.

The human raises his head, and Crowley can see, now, the source of the confusion. The man is blind, his eyes milky and opaque, focusing on nothing.

"I don't need to know what you look like," he answers. He sounds... reverent. But more than that. He sounds _happy_. Joyful, even. It's not a tone of voice Crowley has heard much. He's brought joy to plenty of humans, sure, but it's always been tinged with guilt in there somewhere, and that's a very different kind of sound. "I can feel your holiness in the air," the man says. "Praise be, that you came! We prayed for you, and you came."

"I, uh... I..." He doesn't know what to say. He can't look into that dirty, joyful, grateful face and say, "Nope, I'm a demon, sorry," or "I'm not here because God actually cares whether or not you starve," or "I'm just filling in because the angel Heaven did send would rather sit in a cozy inn somewhere drinking wine and arguing with monks about manuscript illumination techniques."

So instead he says, "You're welcome."

Is this what it would have been like, he wonders, if he hadn't Fallen? People thanking him instead of cursing his name? Well. Not his _name_. None of them has ever bothered to learn his name. That's never stopped any of them from hating him, though. 

Funny, when he thinks about it. How both that and this involved him giving the humans something nice to eat.

"Get up," he says. "Don't grovel to me. You shouldn't grovel to anyone. Adam never groveled, not even... after. Get up."

Slowly, the man rises to his feet. Ragged as he is, he still looks a lot more dignified that way.

Crowley stands before him for a moment, staring into his sightless eyes, his enraptured face, as if there might be some message for him to be found there. A ridiculous thought. None of this adoration is for him.

He reaches out and lays a hand across the human's eyes. It's surprising how small a blessing it seems, after all those fields. Such a little thing. Insignificant.

There. Now he'll know. No more insulting mistaken identity. No more crediting to Heaven what a demon has chosen to do for reasons which, ultimately, have very little to do with Heaven's agenda. Perhaps he will even break this man's faith, secure a soul for his Master. Yeah, that's a pretty good reason. That's probably why he's done it.

The human blinks at him, and the awe on his face transforms, but not the way Crowley expects it to. He takes in the yellow eyes, the fiery hair, the dark clothing, the serpentine mark. But he doesn't scream. He doesn't run. He doesn't call for the village priest. 

He also doesn't cry out "Hail, Satan!" and offer his soul up in exchange for more miracles, which is an unlikely outcome, but not as uncommon as one might expect.

"Thank you, angel," he says, instead.

Crowley tilts his head in confusion. He checks his work. Yeah. Nothing wrong with the man's eyes now. "Seriously?" he says. "Let me ask you again. Do I _look_ like an angel?"

The man gives him an odd, incredulous look. "How was I to know, before this moment, what an angel might look like?"

"Oh," says Crowley. "Yeah. Good point, I guess."

They stare at each other for a moment, the human's gaze darting back and forth across Crowley's face, taking in the sight with all the greed of a starving man presented with... Well, with a blessed and bountiful harvest, Crowley supposes.

"I made stars," Crowley says. He doesn't mean to say it. He barely even recognizes his own voice. It's softer than it's meant to be. More wistful. "A long, long time ago. I made a lot of stars."

"I've never seen stars," says the man. "No more than I had ever seen an angel."

"Look up, at night, and you'll see them. Little lights, way up there in the sky. Some of those are mine."

"Thank you." The human is smiling at him, still. Now that his eyes have cleared up, Crowley can see the light of the man's happiness shining in them, too.

"Don't thank me," says Crowley. "All I ever did was present you humans with things you were never meant to have."

The man looks past Crowley, out over the field of wheat. "Are we not meant to have the grain?"

"Yeah." Crowley shrugs. "S'pose so."

"Well, then" says the man, looking back at Crowley again. "Who knows? Perhaps one day we will also have the stars."

Crowley cocks his head at the man and pushes his glasses back up his nose. "You are a very strange human."

"May be. But, from everything I have heard, you seem to be a very strange angel. If I might be so bold as to say so."

Crowley laughs. The human smiles at him, looking pleased, and Crowley laughs again, a great, burbling, undignified, undemonic laugh. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah. Guess that's exactly what I am."

He turns and looks out across the field of grain. It looks pretty good, if he does say so himself.

He's still tired. But perhaps not quite as tired as he'd thought. The stars, after all, took a lot more energy. They weren't anywhere near as _difficult_ as plants, but they were quite a bit bigger. And hotter. And very finicky about how you fine-tuned the nuclear forces.

Right. He turns again, and begins to walk back in the direction of the road.

"Angel," the man calls after him, "where are you going?"

"Pretty sure I noticed an apple orchard on the way out here," he answers, over his shoulder. "I think I'm gonna go bless that, too."

He probably won't tell Aziraphale about this. Probably. He definitely won't ask him what he thinks of the idea of a demon as a very strange angel. He already knows what Aziraphale would feel he had to say to that.

But, perhaps, over cider that might or might not come from this orchard, and bread that might or might not come from this wheat, he will ask if Aziraphale thinks humans might ever be given time enough to reach the stars.

Because, yeah, well. What can he say? It turns out he likes the thought of humans appreciating his gifts. Maybe that makes him a very strange demon, too. 

But maybe an angel who likes receiving them might actually understand.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Random Factors](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29271639) by [thisbluespirit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit)




End file.
